Educational Learning Experience
by Dj Tyf0on
Summary: Written for the Portal Kink Meme. Set in a humanized!AU where Curiosity is a college student doing an internship with Rick as her mentor. You can tell where this is probably going.


**Disclaimer: I don't own Portal, Valve does.**

Written for the Portal Kink meme.

Prompt taken from LJ:  
>(paraphrased)<br>Because, come on.  
>She'd totally ask him how he got his black belt in the bedroom. And Rick is <em>always<em> happy to show a pretty lady his moves. *SHOT*  
>Rick. With Curiosity. In the bedroom. Learning how Rick became a black belt in it. Please.<p>

Totally hijacked it and created an AU. Because that's how I roll.

* * *

><p>It was a yearly tradition of Cave Johnson to invite what he deemed the brightest and best college students to Aperture Science's laboratories to help conduct research over the summer. It was a win-win situation for all, but mostly for Cave. While his scientists and think tanks acquired eager helping hands for experiments and research, Cave won admiration from the public for being a philanthropist of education, and easily received free workers from the college deans that wanted the publicity of one of their students going to a highly acclaimed, if sometimes controversial, research facility. (And grants. Lots of federal grants. He needed that money.)<p>

In the beginning, Rick didn't think much of her except as another summer intern to help with research. When he saw a manila folder on his desk one morning in June, he internally groaned. There was a small note with Caroline's handwriting attached to it, but he didn't need to read it. He knew that it was the 'Here's an intern I want you to watch over you can take it or leave it but remember your bonus' note. From previous years, he'd seen his colleagues get the same message from that manipulative bitch.  
>And he begrudgingly admitted to himself that there was no chance that he would be able to get out of this overly air-conditioned office and travel around the world this summer.<p>

He sighed, and flipped through the folder labeled "Madeline".

She was petite, and with the difficulty being vertically challenged was bound to be easily ignored in high school and college. Instead, she always sat in the front row of her classes so she could make sure that her teachers acknowledged her existence, and always had the loudest voice when asking questions. Her rather vehement curiosity had led her to be shoved into higher level classes, her former teachers finally unable to answer her questions (and quite possibly, to get rid of her). She didn't mind that she was doing significantly harder classes then other students her age, or that she had to give up a weekend or two with friends in order to complete a paper or a particularly long math assignment. Everything piqued her interest, but of course living in a state like _Iowa_, nothing interesting was bound to happen there anytime soon.

When she got the invitation from Aperture, she made it a priority on her to-do list to get a good notebook. She was going to ask a _lot_ of questions.

Rick was taken aback when he met his intern for the first time. Madeline looked like a kid, with blonde curls tied into ponytails at the nape of her neck and wide hazel eyes framed by cherry red glasses. He made an excellent contrast with her, with his dark brown hair slicked back and olive green eyes. Rick's six-foot-four frame towering over her five-foot-two, he found it a tad humorous when Madeline almost had to go on her toes to shake his hand. She was babbling on about about being excited to help with research and whatnot, she pretty much seemed like a kid in a candy shop when it came to lab research.

But her questions. They _never_ stopped.

For Rick, the fifteen minute walk to the research labs was made even more irritating that it already was because of Maddie (she insisted on being called that) spitting out questions faster than he can answer them. Most of them were easy ones that pertained to the facility, but when it came to the ones that involved a lot of explaining involving theoretical science, his patience was wearing thin. Adding the fact that Caroline started the internships on a Friday to make employees obligated into working overtime today, he wasn't in the best of moods as they reached the labs.

Reaching the entrance, he hastily swiped his keycard and quickly pulled her through the door and into a laboratory around the same size as a large dining hall. Maddie took note of how Aperture seemed to have a preference for three colors. Rick and the other scientists and engineers were easily identified by their crisp white lab coats, and stood out from the sea of blue in various hues, which was composed of medics and clean-up crews. The test subjects were all wearing identical jumpsuits in that odd, cheerful orange.

She had to quickly jump aside to avoid colliding with a swarm of lab boys sprinting from the entrance to the test chambers carting a slightly damaged device while a occupied gurney followed suit. The poor test subject was in some type of delirium, mumbling about how a dog was peeing on his leg. In actuality, he had a compact fracture in his lower leg, and blood was dripping out at a disturbingly quick pace. The nurses were looking at the test subject with disdain, looking at each other as if to say, "These_ idiots_." It was quite an eyeful for her first day.

"That _has_ to suck, don't it?" Said a deep voice behind her.

"What?"

Maddie turned around to see Rick and one of his fellow colleagues shake their heads at the sight. He raised an eyebrow at her and shrugged.

"It happens a lot here. Get used to it sweetie."

Maddie was slightly disturbed by how nonchalant Rick was about seeing gruesome injuries. It was as if he was just looking at...modern art statues.

"How often does this happen?" she asked.

"Once a week, maybe twice. Four times if we're lucky. Usually just broken wrists though." She cringed at Rick's calm reply. "The clumsy ones usually have the more, to put it bluntly, _entertaining _injuries." He let out a muffled laugh as he clapped her on the shoulder. She definitely wasn't going to take notes on this. "And I do love me some explosions. Anyways, feel free to look around for a bit. I gotta talk to Craig here about the molecular stability of this new refracting glass..."

Rick oh-so-slightly pushed his new intern to the side as he quickly followed Craig, making himself appear throughly immersed with his fellow scientist's findings. When they were a safe distance away from the girl, Rick began to talk.

"Christ, it's only been what, thirty minutes and she's been a pain in the ass. All of her questioning, jeez...she could be worse than that tall British nurse, who's _already_ a moron in the first place." He rubbed his temples and sighed. "And I have to spend the rest of the day with her?" The brunette groaned. His pale blond companion rolled his eyes and smirked.

"Correction. Two months and three weeks," Craig retorted teasingly. "But you know, I could break it down for you further-"

"Nope, no thank you. Gimme that report, why don't you..."

Rick hastily ripped the papers from Craig's grip, suddenly finding a new-found appreciation for something as mundane as molecular structures. It would be forty minutes of peace.

Meanwhile, Maddie was mesmerized by the levitating gels in pneumatic glass tubes around the lab. The lights shined on the peculiar substances, giving them a etheral glow around them. Glancing to see if Rick was still talking to his odd co-worker in the pink sweater-vest, she scurried closer to one of the tubes, dodging a hurried worker here and there. Finally face to face with one of the odd blobs, she just stood there peering through the glass at the strange substance that glowed like moonlight. Unbeknownst to the girl, her hand had brushed over what seemed to be some little inconspicuous switch.

It's always the little things in life that seem to change everything.

Rick and Craig were just about finished going over design specs of a new material for test puzzles when a lab tech ran towards them, dragging along Maddie by her wrist. She looked frightened to death, compared with the anxious tech. The young man handed her over to Rick, clapping him on the shoulder.

"Hey Rick, take care of your intern, will you?" The tech said with a grin. "You might lose your job over her."

Rick was quickly riled up by that last sentence. He stared at his skittish intern with disbelief. He swore he heard something breaking a minute or two ago, but if she was involved...

"Why is there a clean-up crew there?"

The lab tech nervously laughed, then sucked in his breath.

"Uh, well you see what happened was...the tube kind of was full of gel, and it kind of leaked."

"I see broken glass." Craig was always the observant one.

The lab tech couldn't hide it anymore. He sighed and shot Maddie a sheepish apologetic look.

"Fine. The tube exploded."

Rick was not amused. Not even at the explosion.

"What the hell did you do? Ten freaking minutes-"

Maddie's heart sank. It's only been less than two hours, and she'd already screwed things up. And she was horrible at covering things up.

"IswearIdidn'tmeantoIwasjustcuri-"

"She changed the viscosity of C-G 217." The lab tech butted in.

"WHAT?" Rick had been keeping a close eye on that experiment, and the due date for its findings was looming near. There was no way in hell he could restart it and give a decent report.

"Don't worry, it seems that the volume of the gel expanded in the tube, so the gross product increased." He gave an awkward thumbs-up. "We collected most of it, and we're placing it in a new pressurized chamber."

There was a moment of tense silence between the four of them. Rick sighed and quickly ushered Maddie to the exit, nodding to Craig and the lab tech.

"I guess that's fine for now, I'll get a look over it after I give a_ little_ talk in my office to this young lady."

It was a brisk walk to his office, but the tension between the two made Maddie feel absolutely horrible.

"Um, Rick?"

There was no response. He merely swiped his keycard and motioned for Maddie to enter. She found herself slinking into a chair across from Rick at his desk. What she was about to ask was stupid and absolutely insane. She licked her lips and hoped for the best possible outcome.

"Can I stay during your overtime? I mean, I'd like to help correct my mishap."

Rick noticed he holding in her breath. _Does she really expect something?_ He scoffed and shook his head at her.

"Heh. That's pretty bold of you little lady, considering you may have fucked up something I have worked on for God knows how long." He raised an eyebrow at Maddie's blank stare. "What?"

"So is that a yes or a no?" She didn't know why she asked that, but it didn't hurt to confirm.

" Seriously? Whaddya think?" He grabbed the forms in his in-tray and started to read them, waiting for her to respond. He wondered why she was taking a while for an obvious answer.

"Y-well, no. No sir." Maddie held her head down, silently berating herself.

"Correct. Finally, for once today, you've answered your own question. Now can you please leave?" Without looking at her, he pointed towards the door.

Maddie stood up and was ready to leave, but not without one last appeal.

"But_ why_ can't you let me help?"

Now Rick had enough. The girl had already bombarded him with her annoying questions and destroyed his work, and now she was asking to stay to try to fix her mistakes? He got out of his chair and beat Maddie to the door. Leaning back and crossing his arms across his chest in a pose that reeked of smug superiority, he was going to unleash hell on her.

"Ugh. You damn overeager, overachieving college students. You always, always,_ always_ bite off more than you can chew. I bet you think you're all that 'cause you're from that Corncob University. What you did today was just pure dumb_ luck_. Listen up, freshie. You don't know squat about what we're doing. Our experiments never gets published into the scientific journals until _years_ later. Also, your little textbook knowledge can't help you here, alright? Anyways," he continued. "Next week, expect to do a shitload more observing and holding all your fucking questions until the end of the day, okay? Now seriously, GET. OUT."

They stood in a standstill for a solid seven seconds, dull green eyes glaring at trembling golden brown. Letting out a disgusted scoff, Rick walked past her, sat at his desk, and picked up the paperwork that he had to fill out. He looked up again to see Maddie still standing there, her hands balled up tightly into fists, biting her lower lip, presumably going over what she had to say.

"What, another question?"

She shot him a look of utter hatred.

"You really are an asshole, aren't you?" She ran out, slamming the door behind her. Rick slumped back into his chair and pinched the bridge of his nose.

"Aw, _fuck_."


End file.
